$1.2M plan would add emergency crews in Escondido

Escondido Fire captain Mike Bertrand attatches a hose to the exaust pipe of this engine company, which is operating temporarily out of Fire Station 6. The city is planning on spending $1.2M to increase staffing of fire stations. It is a long-awaited decision to hire new firefighters and paramedics for Fire Station 6 in south Escondido that opened in 2008. The city had planned to fully staff the station, but recession cost the city the money needed for that so the station only had an ambulance company.

Escondido Fire captain Mike Bertrand attatches a hose to the exaust pipe of this engine company, which is operating temporarily out of Fire Station 6. The city is planning on spending $1.2M to increase staffing of fire stations. It is a long-awaited decision to hire new firefighters and paramedics for Fire Station 6 in south Escondido that opened in 2008. The city had planned to fully staff the station, but recession cost the city the money needed for that so the station only had an ambulance company.

Escondido would spend $1.2 million per year on three new firefighters and two dozen new paramedics under a proposal the City Council is scheduled to discuss today.

The additional personnel would allow Escondido to make the long-awaited move of adding a fire engine to its Del Dios Road station in southwestern Escondido, a location vulnerable to wildfires. The station opened in 2008 with only an ambulance because of a city budget crisis during the Great Recession.

The proposal would also add three new ambulances in Escondido to improve response times to medical emergencies, which city officials say have risen sharply since 2009.

The city laid off 10 emergency medical technicians that year, reducing ambulance service and forcing Escondido to rely more on mutual aid agreements with neighboring fire departments.

In interviews this week, city officials praised the proposal as a crucial step forward for public safety, and an appropriate way to spend part of a $4.1 million budget surplus the city posted during the last fiscal year.

“This has been needed for a while,” said Councilwoman Marie Waldron, who has lobbied for an engine company on Del Dios Road for years. “It’s imperative that we have engine companies in all of our fire stations.”

But city officials also said the proposal was a compromise, not an ideal solution.

To save money, Escondido would veer from its model of having all paramedics cross-trained as firefighters. Instead, the new paramedics would only be trained to handle medical emergencies, not rescues or some vehicle crashes.

In addition, the Del Dios Road station would be closed completely from Dec. 16 to March 16.

The station has temporarily had a fire engine and crew the last 15 months because the crew from the Kit Carson Park station was displaced as their station was renovated. But that engine and crew would move back to the Kit Carson station when it opens Dec. 16, and the new crews for the Del Dios station wouldn’t be trained and ready for service until March 16.

“This isn’t an ideal situation, but it’s the lesser of two evils,” said Jeff Sargis, president of the Escondido Firefighters Association labor union. “We’re running out of ambulances on a daily — almost hourly — basis.”

Sargis said some union leaders plan to tell the council during today’s meeting that they would prefer to stick with “dual-trained” personnel, which would increase the annual cost of adding the engine company and three ambulances from $1.2 million to $2.6 million.

But Sargis said union leaders also understand the city’s focus on being frugal.

“We believe firefighter/paramedics are the way to go, but we’re not putting our hands up and fighting,” he said.

Sargis also said it would be a significant step forward to have a fire engine permanently in southwestern Escondido. “This has been a long time coming,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for this since the voters approved Proposition P in 2004.”

Sargis was referring to an $84 million ballot measure that paid for the city’s new police headquarters that opened in 2010 and four new fire stations, including the Del Dios Road station.

But when the recession sharply reduced city revenue in 2007 and 2008, Escondido officials decided they couldn’t afford to fully staff that station.

And city revenue didn’t significantly recover until recently. The city posted multimillion dollar deficits in four consecutive years until surging sales tax created the $4.1 million surplus last fiscal year in a $75 million annual budget.

Councilwoman Waldron said the proposal was a good compromise that could be upgraded if city finances continue to improve.

“It’s not ideal, but it gets people in the station so we can utilize a public facility that taxpayers built,” she said. “And we can only go up from there.”

City officials said the additional staff make sense based on the volume of emergency calls in Escondido, which has increased from 6,987 in 1991 to more than 12,000 per year. During that time, only one ambulance company has been added, city officials said.

Today’s council meeting is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. in City Hall, 201 N. Broadway.